The Timesnatcher
by Project Arashi
Summary: Penance? Perhaps. Selfish lust for adventure? Possibly. A megalomaniacal desire to possess all of the most powerful technologies I can come across for my own sole use? Maybe even seriously.
1. Prologue

My name is Chao Lingshen.

In my short lifetime, I have traveled the stars. I have traveled across hundreds of years and interacted with dozens of generations. I was born a child of rebels, insurrectionist mages fighting against the United Nations. They sent me to the future to get revenge, but I found my purpose instead. Instead of revenge, I became a protector. Technology and magic were my weapons, but I was only one person. Against a pan-galactic Covenant, I was all but singularly powerless.

In my short lifetime, I have seen war. I have seen suffering, chaos, and devastation. I have caused some of it, and I have fought to end it all. Over the years, I worked to integrate magic into the normal routines of society and combine it with future technology, and then returned to that future to finish what I had started. And between magic, science, and the human will to survive, we succeeded. We won. The human race would survive as a species.

I knew from the beginning that I would be making a new world. Or a new existence, a new dimension, a new timeline. An alternate reality, the same and yet distinct from the one I had known. Simply by _existing_ in the past, events altered. The moment I appeared in the past, that time in the year 1997 which I still do not know the exact date of, the history of the future—my 'past,' as it were—was lost to me, replaced by a new reality. It's the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, you see; one cannot study an object without affecting it.

As much of an ego-case as it makes me sound, you could really say that I caused this dimension to exist, and I have since taken it upon myself to bear the burden to ensure that it is protected, that its inhabitants are free to live the lives they desire without a threat of utter annihilation, internal or external. I've become quite fond of this dimension, the friends I've made, and the comrades I have fought beside. To me, even though it is not truly my native dimension, it is still my home, the Prime.

Having vanquished the threat of the Covenant, many people would rest, lay down the mantle, and let someone else carry the burden of the Prime's protection. I cannot, in good faith, allow myself to do so. Stopping one extinction-level event doesn't guarantee there won't be others. And that is why I do what I do. Penance? Perhaps. Selfish lust for adventure? Possibly. A megalomaniacal desire to possess all of the most powerful technologies I can come across for my own sole use? Maybe even seriously.

In my short lifetime, I have had a direct hand in saving the human race three times. I have worked behind the scenes or to less overt effect dozens more times. It is my self-appointed journey, my personal millstone. I have had the hubris it took to think myself above the rules of time and space, and so in payment, I have chosen this dimension I have shaped as my charge, and I will protect its existence. At the cost of life and sanity, I will stand in the path of any threat and declare,

"This world and those who reside in it are under the veil of my protection. If you still wish them harm, then come and face the wrath of the Timesnatcher."


	2. Grandfather Paradox

_December 3, 2163  
>Argyre Planitia Plateau, Mars<br>1826 hours, Martian Standard Time  
>Dimensional Location: Prime Universe<em>

The blowing dust of the wide plains left an irritating, scratchy sensation in her eyes as she stared at the carnage before her. Over a dozen bodies lay strewn about the rocky battle site, the vast majority clad in the mismatched attire belonging to the Koslovic rebels. Only one of the dead wore the drab utility uniform of the UN Marine Force Recon element that had been tasked to the region. Ignoring the bodies, and the charged energy remaining in the air from the powerful spells employed to rapidly end the ambush, her attention focused on the small homestead, little more than a shack, really, that they had discovered.

_This can't be... But it is. Here we are, at that time, at that place..._

"Isn't this going to change things?" an even tone asked from beside her. "Alter that war with the Covenant?"

She looked to her left; beside her, the imposing figure of Mana Tatsumiya stood swathed in her tattered white robe, half of a PGM Hecaté II anti-materiel rifle protruding from the robes, staring off into the distance in alertness for enemy activity. The aura of magic coming from the weapon, both the actual weapon and its ammunition, was nearly palpable to those in the recon unit sensitive to it.

Blinking against the dust, she looked back toward the shack, away from her old classmate and comrade. A cold trickle of sweat worked its way down her spine, absorbed moments later by the material of her bodysuit. "No, I don't think it will-_ne_. This Prime universe seems to have stabilized, such that it automatically corrects for anything I do between 1997 and 2557. Some resonance wave from Alysia shooting me with the BCTL while the Cassiopeia was active and the Forced Recognition was in play, I think."

The Chinese woman shrugged off-hand, her left shoulder rising while her right remained motionless. "Or maybe the Guardians did it, the way they forced the timeline to overwrite removing those members of the Kuro crew-_yo_."

Mana rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and while we're at it, maybe some omnipotent god just got tired of you assing things up and set a finite beginning and ending point to your nonsense, with everything in between just left to bounce around and end up sorting itself out like rubber."

Chao grinned. "Maybe. All I know is that this won't change things." Her smile slowly faded, leaving her squinting through the wind and dust at the shack. "And if I'm right, things might have gone off the rails if I _wasn't_ here."

A few paces away, a Marine private wearing a balaclava and goggles to shield his face from the elements approached the sergeant leading the military element. "Perimeter's secure out to four miles, sir. Nothing moving out here but us, the wind, and whatever's in that shack."

Nodding, the sergeant turned toward the two women. "Alright, we've got the area locked down," he told them. "Be my guest, Spook Squad."

Mana's face remained impassive at the disparaging jab, and Chao frankly didn't care. It wasn't that he had a distaste for magic—over a hundred years after the Unification, anti-magic sentiment was practically nonexistent—but the fact that the two of them, being mages (of sorts, at least, in Mana's case), were given field authority over the actual squad leaders. She knew enough military men and women to know that they hated people going over their heads.

Nodding her head noncommittally to the non-commissioned officer, Chao approached the shack while Mana remained unmoving, as still and steady as a stone monument. A nameless, unidentifiable emotion welled in her chest with every step closer, pressing against her heart and lungs until she was left with the sudden random thought that she'd stepped into an area of the planet where the terraformation hadn't completely taken and a null-atmosphere bubble had formed. Was it fear? Anticipation? She honestly couldn't tell.

Raising her left hand, she scrutinized the safety lever of the well-worn, lovingly-maintained M6D Magnum personal defense weapon she had been using for the vast majority of her adult life, ensuring that the prized weapon was set to fire. She tugged back the slide just enough to make sure that a 12.7mm semi-armor piercing high-explosive round was chambered, then cautiously stepped through the entrance.

The anti-personnel mine that someone had trapped the door with would have killed any of the Marines, and maybe even would have incapacitated Mana. But for the instant it took for the mine to fire its seven hundred steel BBs into the space Chao occupied, she _wasn't_ in that space. For that instant, she technically didn't exist at all.

Once the moment of danger had passed, she snapped back into existence again, the air thick with the tang of magic and the all-too-familiar scent of explosives. Her skin tingled as she snapped the pistol into a ready stance and sidestepped into the first room, her tactile motion tracker primed to alert her of threats. From her quick glances looking for threats, it appeared to be a combination living room and dining room affair, with one two-person couch around the corner from the door and a tiny square table across from the entry door.

Whoever had laid the trap clearly expected it to have performed its lethal job, as Chao's motion tracker buzzed in a vertical line along her side, the tactile sensation telling her the direction of the threat as a woman stepped from around a nearby door, a German-built G29 SABR assault rifle in the woman's hands coming into line with Chao's center of mass.

Her instincts were long honed to a razor's fine edge, thanks entirely to the many battlefields she had passed through in her life: Mages vs. Mars, the battle in which she had taken the role of the world's villain to temper it for the battles to come. The Unification War, first alone and then alongside the Kuro crew before learning that she, herself, was one of those Chosen Heroes. The Human-Covenant War, the culmination of everything she had spent her life preparing for, fighting with comrades both old and new to decisively end the threat presented by the alien amalgamation. Then there was the event known as Third Mages vs. Mars, which was less an existential conflict and more sticking it to the Office of Naval Intelligence one last time. She was no longer the untested, fledgling fighter that had once challenged her Great Ancestor to magical combat and been soundly defeated, and she could no more stop her response to the immediate threat of the armed woman than she could move the stars from their orbits.

Her Magnum came up in her left hand at the same moment she stepped back with her right foot, shifting her entire body so that she presented a narrower profile to the woman. Of the three hasty shots fired by the woman, who was completely surprised at Chao's presence—not only unharmed, but actively ready for further combat—two passed wide by her head, existing the building entirely with the sound of splintering wood. The third splashed harmlessly against her personal energy shield, its kinetic energy absorbed entirely by the golden geodesic light and doing nothing to spoil the aim of her single, answering shot.

In this timeline, the M6 series of sidearms was limited to the use of Mahora's Mage Knight defense forces and the armed forces of the Island Republic of MolMol, and if things otherwise went as prior history dictated, wouldn't see widespread adoption in the Unified Earth Government and its military, the United Nations Space Command, until about 2410. Very few other .50-caliber sidearms existed in the current time due to the impracticality of such a large caliber requiring a substantially larger and heavier weapon to accommodate for the recoil force, but there was no denying the viability of the semi armor-piercing, high-explosive round when the woman's upper body—she wasn't wearing armor—instantly transformed into what closely resembled chunky salsa.

Unlike in most media, the woman wasn't blown across the room by the kinetic force of the bullet. Instead, she stumbled backwards, the rifle clattering from deadened hands, and hit the back wall with a wet splat. Her body slid slowly down the wall, a wide red trail of blood left in her wake, before coming to a stop in a seated position.

In the next instant, Chao heard the sound of breaking glass, followed by the clatter of something small and metallic skipping off the floor. Instinctively, she displaced herself out of the timestream for her own protection. This was the technique that her Great Ancestor had referred to as 'pseudo time stop,' in which she removed herself from time—usually to avoid an otherwise unavoidable attack—and then returned to a point of her choosing. Others saw it as an instantaneous transmission from point A to point B, but for her, it was like being ripped backwards out of a window and into the ocean, allowing her to observe events in a semi-muted, washed-out haze at a slower progression of time, before then choosing what time and place she would return to.

From her outside perspective, she watched as the flashbang grenade thrown by one of the Marines skipped twice more, then burst in a blinding flash of illumination and deafening noise level. Outside of the flow of space and time as she was, it had no affect on her other than a harmless moment's flash, allowing her to see a further two more flashes in other parts of the building as the Marines made absolutely certain that they'd be facing no prepared resistance.

At once, the squad stormed the shanty as one unit, half through the entrance she had used, the others through a back entrance she couldn't see. This would be the worst possible time to reappear in their midst, and so continued to wait. The first of the Marines swept into the room she had been in, his attention hovering briefly on the dead woman before he continued his long-ingrained room clearing procedures. She heard the breach in the rear of the building, followed swiftly by a brief burst of gunfire. If her assumptions about this place were correct, that would mark the end of resistance in this place.

Snapping back into the normal timestream filled her senses once more with the natural color and sounds of the world. The Marine to her immediate right, unaware that she'd returned, stood up in a more relaxed posture and called out, "All clear!"

It was then that she finally registered and identified the background sound that she'd been hearing ever since she'd avoided the claymore attack: the plaintive, fearful wailing of a very young child.

Pushing past the Marine in her way, she entered the rear room where the cries were coming from. Inside, a male body laid face-down in a pool of spreading blood, a single crimson-stained ring on his right hand the only indication he had intended to resist the two Marines now searching his body. Across from the door, the squad sergeant stood over a small, plain wood crib, looking in at the crying baby.

"Will somebody shut that kid up?" one of the Marines remarked off-hand, reaching forward to slide the bloody magic focus ring off the dead man's hand and inspect its inner surface for any identifying marks.

"We just killed its parents," the sergeant shot back. "We're probably going to have to take it with us and get it into an orphanage."

Moving to stand on the opposite side of the crib, Chao laid her right hand on its edge as she held her left—and the Magnum—down by her hip. With a flash of digitized energy, she dismissed the weapon back into her hammerspace storage unit and regarded the infant. Staring down at it, she felt that chill of uncertainty in her gut again. "That might not be necessary-_ne_..." she murmured.

She leaned into the crib and gently lifted the child out, cradling the infant to her chest. The baby girl—and she had no doubt now as to exactly _who_ this child was—calmed almost immediately, curling against her bosom and taking in a deep breath, followed almost immediately by a contented coo.

A brief thought back to her biology and social sciences classes caused her to contemplate that infants were very easily calmed by smells they considered familiar, and it broke her heart that this child already considered the smell of leather, magic, gunpowder, and blood to be familiar. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, and for the briefest of instants she entertained the overwhelmingly-powerful temptation to succumb to her maternal instincts and take this child as her own, rather than send her down an all-too-familiar road.

"There's some _Back to the Future_ joke I should be making here, but I think instead I'll just relate the story of you being motherly and weepy, _over yourself_, to the rest of our comrades," Mana's voice interrupted her thoughts from the doorway. "More personally amusing that way."

The half-demon's words shined a light through the fog of her thoughts, revealing them all to be the hollow and fleeting dreams that they were. She looked down at the infant in her arms, at _herself_, and knew that she had to ensure that the wheel of time continued to turn.

At that moment, one of the searching Marines turned from a nearby desk dangling a gold-faced pocketwatch on a chain from his fingers, holding up the item apprehensively as it twisted in and out of the light. "Got some kind of magic item here."

Adjusting the infant Chao in her arms to support her with one arm, the elder woman reached out to take the watch and inspect it. "The prototype Cassiopeia," she explained. Flipping its protective face open with a practiced ease, she inspected its inner workings a moment, then tsked and shook her head with a rueful grin. "Ah, it looks so primitive to me now-_yo_. But yes, this is the original device my birth parents created."

"Can it get her where she needs to go?" Mana inquired, nodding her head toward the now-peacefully sleeping baby.

"On its own? No," Chao answered immediately. "It's not precise enough to select destination location as well as time. I have no idea how I managed to end up where I did. Perhaps the Guardians put me where I needed to be-_ne_. But here, with her, I can do that myself." Wrapping the chain around her wrist, she looked around the room. "There should also be a letter..."

"This?" the second Marine asked, holding up a blood-stained envelope that emanated a magic aura.

"Yes." She didn't bother to open it to assure it was the one she wanted, as it was identical to the one she remembered, even down to the pattern of the stains. "Now it's time to leave the rest to history..."

Dropping the two magic items in the corner of the crib, Chao gently lowered the infant back into the crib. Disturbed by the movement, the baby opened her eyes and blinked up at her older self, but Chao knew that she was nothing more than a blur of colors to the girl's undeveloped vision. Unable to help herself, she deftly stripped the powered glove from her right hand and reached down to stroke the baby girl's face, smiling wistfully as she whispered, "Do not be afraid, little one. A great deal of hardship awaits you-_ne_, but you will achieve everything that you set out to do in your life. I promise."

Her younger self made happy gurgling sounds and reached out for her hand, unable to do anything more than pat at her fingers and palm. With her free hand, Chao reached over to grasp the Cassiopeia, tuning its instrumentation to the destination date of December 3, 2540. Knowing that it lacked the power on its own to make such a substantial leap through time, she set it back down and closed her eyes as she laid her hand over it.

"_Ras teil mai magicscir magister_..."

Magic rippled through her body like the surface of a disturbed pond, radiating out through her fingers and refining the bubble of energy created by the glowing Cassiopeia, enhancing it to provide the sophistication necessary to select a destination place as well as time. Channeling her innate temporal abilities into the magic field as well, she visualized the city she still considered to be her hometown: New Legaspi. As the familiar spires and complexes of Misriah Armories appeared in her mind's eye, she realized that even doing this was leaving far too much to chance. She increased her concentration, and the temporal bubble expanded to encompass her within its barely-discernible field as well.

The Marines stepped back in surprise, but from the door, Mana nodded her head in understanding. "And so the adventures of the girl who snatched the secrets of time continue," she said. "Never going to take a rest, are you?"

Looking toward the door, Chao shrugged and smirked. "Oh, you know me-_ne_. Always the final boss of justice."

Nodding her head, Mana lifted her left arm from beneath her cloak and tossed off a two-fingered salute to her former classmate. "Then I look forward to seeing you in the future."

"Or maybe in the past," Chao affirmed, then closed her eyes once more and released her hold over the temporal magic. A brilliant light engulfed her, and the dreary shanty in which she had been born faded from around her before the timestream obliterated her sense of anything but _self_ entirely.

* * *

><p><em>December 3, 2540<br>Near the Misriah Armories Corporate Offices, New Legaspi, Mars  
>2138 hours, Martian Standard Time<br>Dimensional Location: Prime Universe_

The wet, musty smell of garbage was the first sense to return to her. Opening her eyes, Chao found herself in a back alley that serviced several buildings, all of them restaurants of some degree judging by the smell coming from the various refuse bins. As she looked around to try to gain her bearings, she saw the massive, lumbering form of a civilian Oliphant garbage truck trundle across an intersecting alley, and smiled faintly at the sight of the familiar UNSC vehicle.

After a moment, she looked down to ensure that she hadn't lost anything. The infant version of herself, cradled safely in the crook of her left arm, looked around at the new setting she found herself in. The letter and prototype Cassiopeia were pressed against her chest, tucked in beneath the infant. Gently picking them up, she lifted them away from her body and dismissed them into her hammerspace storage with a flash of light and magic.

"Okay, now to get to _Mǔqīn_ and _Fùqīn_ and get you on your way, little one~" she said, moderating her voice artificially high and making a cutesy face down at the infant. Raising her head, she glanced about furtively. "Need to get going before-"

The words died in her throat.

Black-clad men, four of them, were coming toward her from the direction she was facing, and the tingle of her tactile motion tracker warned her of more coming from behind. The black urban fatigues they wore had no patches designating their affiliation, but she didn't need a strip of colored cloth to tell her that these were Office of Naval Intelligence mage hunters. She'd never fully determined what division they actually belonged to, but Section III was responsible for most of ONI's dirty laundry, so she was willing to go out on a limb and assumed they were under Section III.

What surprised her was the speed of their response time. She knew that they had all kinds of devices and personnel able to detect the use of magic, and the early Cassiopeia devices made about as much noise to anyone or anything that could detect magic as a slipspace rupture, but it hadn't even taken them a minute to get here. Unless she had the _incredible_ misfortune to appear right in an area where a patrol was wandering, she had no reason not to believe that her arrival hadn't been tipped.

On the other hand, the earlier incarnations of the Cassiopeia were known for telegraphing the arrival point several hours in advance as they gathered the necessary energy to safely return her to the timestream. For all she knew, these guys had picked up the signature of the building energy and had been camping on the spot all day waiting for it to do something. It wasn't like it actually mattered, in the long run; these agents were here and had to be dealt with, period.

"Chao Springfield," the third man back in the group ahead of her called out. "Don't make any sudden moves."

That was curious as well, that use of her Great Ancestor's family name as her own. Was that what their records said? She knew full well that the culture and media of the time when she'd been active with the rest of the Kuro crew had recorded the family name _Lingshen_ that she had lived her life under. And if there was one thing she could count on ONI for, besides being autocratic douchehammers, was meticulous record-keeping. But then, there was her fellow Hero, Evangeline A.K. McDowell, to consider. In her home timeline, she'd never even known if the high daylight walker had survived into the 26th century, but the Evangeline she had attended school with and fought alongside in the Unification War had been prepared to be much more proactive toward preparing for the Human-Covenant War. It would be just like the vampire to alter ONI's records in order to protect both the Lingshen family and the infant child she held in her arms.

"You are wanted for fifty-seven violations of the Crowley Act and the unauthorized displacement of temporal anomalies," the man continued, as though he was simply reading from a script. He probably was. No doubt they expected her to be trouble, hence why they had brought—here she glanced quickly sideways to catch a reflection of three additional men behind her in a grimy window—seven agents to come after her. They probably should have brought more.

But _fifty-seven_? Either they were just making up a ludicrous amount of charges under this 'Crowley Act'—and she knew the reference they were making, to an early 20th century British man known for starting his own quasi-magical Satanist religion predicated on doing whatever the hell one wanted—or the law was more draconian than it had any right to be.

"Surrender the child and any magic artifacts or mundane weapons you might be carrying," the agent continued, "and convey yourself for arrest without incident. Resistance will be met with force, and any attempt to use the Cassiopeia will be met with indiscriminate deadly force. Will you comply?"

So they knew about the Cassiopeia. That meant that they were using the information from that time. The fact that they hadn't made mention at all of her _own_ personal ability to manipulate time meant they didn't know she could do it. She'd have to thank Evangeline later for muddying the waters in her favor.

Even still, the arrogance of the man caused her to lower her head and grit her teeth in rage. It was to be expected, the way ONI was used to acting with complete impunity, unanswerable to anyone. Even knowing that, the casual, off-handed threat of harm to her infant self was enough to set her blood boiling. The glorious day when that entire organization would be put up against the wall was coming, and the infant girl in her arms would get to experience it firsthand, just as she had.

"Will you comply?" the agent pressed.

She could sense a surge of magic from the agent behind and to her left, and scowled at discovering another mage who would choose to work for such an oppressive agency against their own people. But then she smiled and lifted her head. ONI's day of reckoning wouldn't be for sixteen years yet, but these agents wouldn't be around to see it, and the Covenant had nothing to do with it.

"Not without incident-_yo_!"

She displaced herself and her younger self out of time, battering down an energy field that had clearly been placed to keep her from abusing the time stream. They obviously expected her to rely on the Cassiopeia for her extra-temporal activities, and her own natural talent overpowered the countermeasures they had prepared. And here, outside of time, the infant Chao would be safe from them and easily-retrieved by her, allowing her to fight unhindered.

And that mage was her first target.

Moving her return point to behind the man was as simple as willing it. Still outside of time, she initiated her strike toward the base of the man's spine in an instant disabling blow. In the last moment before contact, she returned to time, to the agents appearing to _instantly_ change position and complete her strike. She felt bone shatter beneath her hand, and the mage began to drop like a sack of potatoes from the hit.

Another pulse of temporal power reduced time to a crawl for the entire universe—except her. As the mage's body—a strike that high and that hard would have left him either dead or unable to control his autonomous body functions—began its weightless collapse to the ground, the man to her right, beside the mage, was beginning the process of reaching into his cloak for a concealed weapon. He never got the chance. Stepping in, she lifted her boot and stomped onto the side of his knee, snapping the joint in a direction it was not meant to go. She followed through with a left hook into the man's face, holding back none of her strength, and knowing from personal experience that she had more than enough to blow through the powered armor of a Covenant brute and still deal lethal damage. Turning away at the moment of impact, she lifted her right hand, data and energy shimmering into the shape of the smooth-worn, once-chromed M6D in her grip, and calmly shot the third agent in the head.

That left four agents, and she dismissed the Magnum into her storage space as magic energy flowed to both her hands. "_In mea manu ens inimicum edat..."_

She left sparkling motes of red energy in her wake as she time-stepped into their midst, reappearing with a roar of flame as she unleashed the _Flagrantia Rubicans_ spell at the first and last of the agents. Striding through the flames, she flowed her movement into a flat-palm blow to the nose of the second man, splintering the bone up into his brain. She drew her left arm across her chest and struck the agent who'd done all the talking in the throat with the knife-edge of her hand, crushing his larynx and trachea.

Taking a moment to glance around, she ensured that she had dealt with all threats before she backed out of the timestream to retrieve her infant self. To add yet more insult to injury, she even went so far as to return to the exact spot that she had stood in before initiating her attack, lending the appearance to any outside observer that she had slaughtered the mage hunters in the blink of an eye without making a single move.

She returned the flow of time to normal with a thought, listening as all seven bodies hit the ground in rough sequence. In the stillness that followed, the only sound was the choked gasping of the lead agent, slowly asphyxiating from his injuries. Turning slowly to face the man, she strode forward with the foreboding inexorability usually reserved only for death and taxes. Her right hand dropped down to her side, magic shimmering around her palm as it coalesced into a matte-black M6C/SOCOM special forces pistol.

"The days of ONI controlling mages through fear are at an end-_yo_," she intoned as she came to a stop just out of reach of the dying agent. "Our focus is on the Covenant, where it belongs, but our memory is matched only by our capacity for revenge."

Lifting the weapon in her hand, she turned her body to interpose her mass between the doomed man and the infant in her other arm. Without further word or hesitation, she put the poor bastard out of his misery, the report of the suppressed weapon, chosen for that exact purpose over the explosive M6D, absorbed by the detritus of the alley. The infant girl in her arms didn't even make a sound.

* * *

><p><em>Lingshen Family Residence<br>2156 hours, Martian Standard Time_

The garbage of the alley she'd first arrived in had masked the scent of approaching rain in the air, and by the time she had reached the home of her adoptive parents, _her_ home, it had already arrived. It was just a light downfall, likely to pass in five or ten minutes, but its presence gave Chao all the excuse she needed to conceal herself in a white cloak before approaching the ornate door. Looking over the front of the manor as she neared, she realized that she had forgotten how well-off her family had been. But then, that was only to be expected of major shareholders in the Misriah Armories.

Ironically enough, being caught out in the rain was far more beneficial than it had seemed at first. The rain soaking her cloak through made her look appropriately bedraggled, allowing her to pull off the look of a beleaguered young mother unable to care for her child. It would arouse less suspicion on security cameras and might not rate a second look by the local AI.

Stopping underneath the sheltering overhang, she carefully wrapped the infant girl in another white cloak, checking to ensure she was protected against the chill in the air. With that complete, she tucked the prototype Cassiopeia and the blood-stained letter into a fold of the cloak, then gently laid her younger self on the mat directly before the door. Leaning forward to kneel over the child, she smiled faintly as she brushed her left hand over the top of the baby girl's head.

To be entirely honest with herself, she had greatly enjoyed the privilege of helping to raise the children that had grown up in the Hinata in the years following the Unification War. But she didn't have the ability to concern herself with children of her own; she had dedicated her life to safeguarding this dimension she was responsible for creating. In that way, it could be said that this timeline and everyone in it were her children. That was cold comfort, however, and didn't bring her the peace she had felt when holding this infant in her arms.

She stepped back, shaking her head softly, and smiled ruefully. "I'm getting soft in my old age-_ne_," she murmured, then turned away and strode into the darkness of the manor grounds.

Halfway to the gate, a voice she hadn't heard in _many_ years stopped her in her tracks. _"There hasn't been a single 'baby on the doorstep' gimmick that's actually succeeded for as long as people have had security AIs in their homes. Far simpler to take advantage of the sanctuary laws. You must be truly desperate to try to leave a child at this residence. And that makes me curious."_

Chao paused in midstep, sighing theatrically. She had hoped to avoid catching the AI's attention, because she really did not need her parents' AI asking all sorts of uncomfortable questions. "This is supposed to be your nightly maintenance period, Artemis," she remarked off-hand.

Near the gate, a holotank shimmered with light, and a one-eighth scale hologram of a woman in a tightly-wrapped toga, a quiver of arrows on her back and a bow in her hand, materialized facing the Chinese genius. Chao took note of the fact that the avatar had an arrow readied in the bow, but not yet drawn; it was indicative that she was not yet hostile, but able to summon reinforcements to this location within seconds.

"_You have me at a disadvantage,"_ Artemis answered. _"You've done your research, haven't you? Now what is it that would make you go to such lengths to not be noticed?"_ A brief flicker of light ran down the holographic body, and the Grecian-themed woman smirked. _"Curious. That infant has an _exact_ genome match to you. Non-medical cloning? Naughty, naughty."_ She paused. _"No, there are trace differences in your genetic makeup. But it's close enough that for all intents and purposes, she might as well be you."_

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you-_yo_," Chao deadpanned.

Internally, she mentally prepared herself for the fact that she may wind up getting into a fight on the grounds of her adoptive parents' home, but kept exceptionally careful not to broadcast any tells like increased heart rate or breathing; Artemis was a medical-use AI for keeping track of her parents' health, and came equipped with advanced sensors to detect any biological change of a human in her sensor zone. Chao had spent much of her youth trying to outsmart Artemis' detection abilities, but had never quite managed to get it just right.

She wasn't entirely certain that she could fool Artemis now, even after her many years of combat experience.

There was an extended, drawn-out pause, then Artemis said simply, _"You would be amazed at what I would believe, Time Hero of Kuro Arashi."_

Chao literally _felt_ the tension flow out of her like air from a balloon. "You've been talking to Evangeline then-_ne_?"

Smiling faintly at having successfully trolled Chao, Artemis dismissed her bow and quiver. Light shimmered around her form momentarily as her toga loosened and draped her form in a more flowing manner. _"I have been informed of the role that this family plays in your growth, yes."_ The AI looked past the Chinese genius, her gaze settling on the bundled infant on the steps. _"I will watch over her and ensure that she develops at her own pace. She will be loved and taught to love others here; your own actions are testament enough of that upbringing."_

"It is rather telling that even now, I identify myself as _Lingshen_ more than I do as _Springfield_, even with two generations of great heroes before me."

"_You do not credit yourself enough, Chao. You are a hero in your own right, and even considered a 'great ancestor' by..."_ Artemis broke off suddenly, closing her eyes and lowering her head as a wave of light once more scrolled down her avatar. _"You should probably go. It wouldn't do for you to be seen out here."_

Nodding her head, Chao stepped back into the shadowy overhang of a tree. The air around her buzzed for a moment, then she slowly faded from sight, hidden by her active camouflage technology. With the rain no longer falling on her as much, she didn't have to worry about the rain drops disturbing the camouflage effect and giving her away. It helped that Artemis was an accomplice in this matter.

From her concealed position, she watched the front door open. In its threshold, the elder man and woman she knew as _father_ and _mother_ looked about the grounds before Artemis' avatar appeared and directed their attention to the infant. Her exceptional hearing allowed her to pick up the conversation.

"_I apologize. I was on my nightly maintenance routine when the mother came. I'm attempting to extrapolate identity and location from Superintendent city cams."_

"No need to trouble yourself, Artemis," her father stated, smiling gently. "We all make mistakes from time to time. Contact the police as soon as you identify the mother, and arrange for the baby to be delivered to the hospital."

Her mother, who had knelt immediately to lift the child from the ground and take her into her arms, now stood again and turned toward her husband, cradling the cooing girl to her chest. "Must we send her away? How many years now have we prayed to have children of our own? Should we not consider her a blessing from our ancestors?"

At those words, Chao felt a chill run down her spine, the brief moment of fear flickering in her chest that her mother _knew_, that all her attempts at subtlety had been for naught. But then it passed; there was no possible way that her mother knew of the days in the past in which she had been labeled a Hero and helped to save the Old and New Worlds. Or so she hoped. It was hard to tell nowadays.

Artemis chose that key moment to interject her statement, _"The hospitals would simply put her in a foster home. This _does_ have the merit of saving everyone involved some hassle."_

Chao's father took a step closer and looked down at the infant girl, then reached out to run a hand over her head. He smiled when the infant reached up her pudgy hands to grasp at his fingers. "Then begin arranging the adoption paperwork, Artemis."

The AI's avatar bowed. _"Right away."_ With that, she vanished in a flicker of green light.

Standing beneath the tree, Chao waited until her parents returned to the warmth of their home, smiling as she reflected on the happy memories of her childhood in that home. Yes, she had done a good thing here, delivering a child into a good home and ensuring the wheel of time continued to turn. Now she had her own affairs to turn to.

She waited several more minutes before turning and stepping out from beneath the tree. The rain returned to her in full force, the droplets that hit her sending ripples and flickers across the field of refracted light surrounding her body. She passed through the gate of the residence and out into the city, heading back to the alley in which she had encountered the mage hunters.

By the time she tracked back to that alley, the rain had come to a stop, and she had returned the mage robe to her hammerspace storage. The bodies were still exactly where she had left them, the various scavengers of the back allies having not yet gotten to them. Stepping slowly and methodically, she centered herself between the bodies and lifted both her hands, magic energy flowing through her body. "_Ras teil mai magicscir magister_..."

Flames sparked into life in her upraised palms, growing in size and intensity as she funneled more energy into them. Taking one last glance around to make sure that she wasn't going to inadvertently start a city fire, she began to immolate the bodies to remove any evidence of her presence. There was nothing she could do about the fact that they had been dispatched against her to begin with, but she could certainly make it look like they'd just vanished into the warp. She collected the shell casings of her weapons as well, then inspected her handiwork. Aside from a few collections of ash, which she dispersed with a burst of magic energy, there would be nothing to indicate anything had ever happened here aside from the residual aftereffects of a lot of magic use. But as the spells and time travel were both _her_ effects, their signatures would bleed together and just look like one large assortment of energy. It would have to do. She didn't have time to scrub the traces of magic.

Another magic circle flared to life underneath her, just large enough for her to be completely encompassed by the pillar of light that rose from its surface, swirling a mix of silver and red. She had a much shorter jump to make this time, and didn't need to expend as much energy. Closing her eyes, she let the magic wash over her as she levitated a few scant inches off the ground, before the world vanished around her.


End file.
